A 22-year-old engineering student who had been questioned by the Delhi Police in connection with an alleged Indian Mujahideen terror plot and given a “clean chit” a month-and-a-half back has been arrested by the Rajasthan Anti-Terrorism Squad.

Ammar Yasir was held on Tuesday from his grandfather’s place in Sherghati in Bihar’s Gaya district, Rajasthan police chief Omendra Bhardwaj told The Indian Express but refused to elaborate. Yasir, an engineering student in Jaipur, and Abdul Wahid had been picked up by the Delhi Police’s Special Cell from their friend’s house in Abul Fazal Enclave in Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh area on March 24.

They had been detained and released around the time the Special Cell arrested four alleged IM operatives, including much-wanted Pakistani national Zia-Ur-Rehman alias Waqas, and claimed to have averted a major terror attack. One of the four arrested was also a student of the same engineering college and was a bomb expert, police had claimed at the time.

Special Commissioner of the Delhi Police’s Special Cell, S N Shrivastava, told The Indian Express that Yasir and Wahid had been released “after questioning and nothing was found against them”.

Yasir’s father Mohammad Firoz Khan said his son was visiting Sherghati after returning home to Dhanbad after performing the Umrah pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.

“We had thought everything is fine now because the Delhi Police has released him honourably. They questioned him for an entire day and let him go only after they were fully convinced that there is nothing against him,” Khan told The Indian Express. “His life had already been ruined because his college had categorically told him that he cannot take the final examinations for his engineering degree. It was a shock to us. We were unable to understand why the college would ruin his life.”

Khan, a chief loco inspector in the railways, said the college authorities claimed Yasir had not been attending classes for the last two years.

“This was outrageous. How could he be in the final year when he wasn’t there for two years? We have receipts of fees and other documents too. This two year thing was a mere excuse, the real reason is that they wanted to ruin his life after what happened in Delhi. It doesn’t matter that the Delhi Police had given him a clean chit and released him.”

Khan said Yasir was held as he emerged from a mosque in Sherghati after evening prayers by policemen from the Rajasthan ATS who had come in civilian clothes. “He is religious, but he has not committed any crime. Why have they arrested an innocent youth again?” said Khan.